Monday March 22, 2021
Dispute in Corona round
Merkel: “We cannot survive like this”
The mood is bad at video switch number 20 on the corona pandemic. The steps agreed so far are not enough for Merkel. When it comes to travel, the round does not progress. Given the exponential growth, permission is “the wrong decision,” says the Chancellor.
Even in the preliminary talks for today’s Bund-Länder-Round, the mood is said to have been “underground”. The Mallorca topic in particular causes trouble in many cases. How should politics mediate when Mallorca fliers are allowed to take off with vacationers, but the holiday home in the Harz Mountains remains inaccessible for Germans? The debate on this is postponed for the time being, the conference is paused at the moment.
“We cannot survive in public like this,” said Chancellor Angela Merkel, according to information from “Spiegel”. And in fact, the yield after four hours of video switching on the strategy in the fight against Corona is meager. What makes the headlines is what the group did not agree on: Accordingly, the Chancellery was unable to enforce a general curfew. The decision on this remains with the federal states, as well as those on possible easing of the contact bans at Easter. Here the Chancellor had also taken a strict line – apparently in vain.
The Chancellor seems to be driven by concerns about how mutant B.1.1.7 will spread further. “We decide today that we will keep what we decided the last time,” she says, according to participants with a view to the “emergency brake”, which should be pulled from a seven-day incidence of 100. In a time of exponential growth in the number of infections, she adds, that is not enough and remains tough on the question of vacation travel within Germany.
Several northerners want to allow vacation travel within the state. However, Merkel also rejects vacation in holiday apartments or with the caravan. “In the midst of exponential growth, that’s the wrong decision.”
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